In recent years, the power of the bond of sisterhood has
permeated the collective consciousness. Let’s take for instance the reaction to
the movie, Frozen. This is a fairy
tale ultimately about the love between sisters. It isn’t the love of prince
that is the act of true love needed to break the curse but rather the love
between the sisters, Anna and Elsa.
There have been articles and think-pieces galore about why
this is a significant development in the realm of children’s movies in terms of
feminist film, but I think it highlights something very important in the
relationship between sisters. It’s a pretty honest portrayal of the bond of
sisterhood. Elsa and Anna could not be more different in terms of personality.
Where Elsa is calm and calculating, Anna is impulsive. Elsa is the responsible
one with her own struggles that she keeps to herself. Anna, on the other hand,
has a certain naïveté and rushes headlong into any situation without thinking
twice. Despite these differences, both Elsa and Anna would sacrifice themselves
simply to protect the other from harm. Even if they can’t understand the other,
there is nothing that one wouldn’t sacrifice for the other.
This is very much like the relationship between my sister
and me. As I said, we are very different people. I tend to be more Elsa-like
while my sister has always been more like Anna. She attacks everything that she
does with gusto while I tend to contemplate and plan, taking every possible
outcome and/or obstacle into account. While we never quite had the same
argument as Anna and Elsa about whether or not Anna should marry someone she
just met, the type of argument is something that my sister and I had quite
frequently growing up. Usually it was me saying we shouldn’t do something and
my sister saying that we should.
This wasn’t always the case, and I could indeed be reckless
when we were playing from time to time. There is one story that my sister
constantly brings up that led to stitches. We were playing in our shared room
as we usually did, but I convinced her that it would be a good idea to play
human cannonball. I offered to pay her a quarter to be the cannonball. Having
convinced her, she leaned back on my feet while I lay on my bed. Soon I
launched her across the room trying to aim her for the other bed. Well, of
course, since I was probably about 6 or 7 and she was 3 or 4, that didn’t go as
planned. She ended up hitting face first on the metal frame of the bed and
busted open her lip. So that was a trip to the doctor for stitches. And my
sister loves to remind me that I never did give her that quarter.
The power of sisterhood as a cultural construct is that
there is a bond that transcends personal differences. My sister and I are
complete opposites and can have screaming matches about any number of topics.
We don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but I wouldn’t trade her for
anything in the world. There are times that I am sure she doesn’t always like
me as a person, and there have been times that I may not particularly like her
either. But I always love her unconditionally.
Happy Birthday, Val!
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